Helena Bonham Carter has played some curious characters in her long acting career, including Death Eater Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter movies, but appearing naked with a fish to promote sustainable fishing is probably a career topper.

Fellow actress Greta Scacchi asked Bonham Carter to join countless other celebrities, including Gillian Anderson, Jerry Hall and daughter Lizzy Jagger, Richard E Grant, Emilia Fox and Lenny Henry, in stripping with seafood to raise awareness of unsustainable fishing. It’s part of a project called Fishlove, started in 2009 by Nicholas Röhl, co-owner of Moshimo, a sushi restaurant in the English coastal town of Brighton, and Scacchi.

Bonham Carter confessed that her fear wasn’t getting naked, it was the 27kg tuna she was about to embrace.

“I am phobic about fishes” she said. “It was me touching the fish, but by the end, we really go to know each other.

“The fish and me, I think we’ve got a future.”

Last week Bonham Carter spoke on the issue in the British House of Commons as a range of groups came together to lobby the government to create more marine reserves in the British territories.

Her next film is Disney’s Cinderella, playing the Fairy Godmother.

‘It was a one night stand,’Bonham Carter confessed. Photo: fishlove.co.uk.